Christie Roberts Square One Year of Lodgement: 2017 School of Language and Culture
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Christie Roberts Square One Year of Lodgement: 2017 School of Language and Culture A thesis and exegesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing ABSTRACT This thesis consists of a full-length screenplay of a pilot for television. The summary of the screenplay is as follows: After losing his job, high flying lawyer Eric Galloway packs up his family and moves back into his elderly mother’s home in Highburn - the run down, rough part of town. Eric plans to open up his own firm and get the family back on its feet financially. However, his plans begin to fall apart when he becomes involved with the local gang leader, Jackal, and a group of middle class busybodies who are trying to gentrify the area. Eric tries to manage working with both sides to improve his family’s situation, but gets stuck in the middle of class warfare, and only ends up neglecting his family in the process. This is a story about good intentions, gentrification, and community. This Thesis is framed by an Exegesis which is a 6000 word essay on the subject of: (a) The genre of the Thesis (b) The emotional truth of the Thesis (c) The development process of the Thesis from synopsis to second draft 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Abstract 2 II. Attestation of Authorship 4 III. Part One: Genre Analysis 1. Define the term “genre” 6 2. Identify the genre of your screenplay 7 3. Make a case that this genre is recognized by the industry 7 4. Summarize the history of that genre 9 5. Identify the key signifiers of this genre 10 6. Explain the expectations of this genre’s contemporary audience 11 7. Explain how your screenplay fulfils those expectations 12 8. Explain how your screenplay provides a fresh perspective 13 IV. Part Two: Script Development Process 1. Emotional Truth 14 2. Initial concept to first draft a.) Synopsis: First Draft 15 b.) Development: First Draft 16 3. First Draft to Second Draft a.) Synopsis: Second Draft 19 b.) Development: Second Draft 20 4. Second Draft to Polished Second Draft a.) Synopsis: Polished Second Draft 21 b.) Development: Polished Second Draft 22 V. References 26 VI. Square One Script 28 3 ATTESTATION OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person ( except where exp I icitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Signed: Christie Roberts. ---�-------' Exegesis “Gentrification, Drama and Development.” 1 Part One: Genre Analysis 1. Define the term ‘genre.’ ‘Genre,’ refers to the particular group or wider set of films or television programs a single film or program can be paired with based on similar themes, tones, settings, and/or audiences. It is often used for marketing purposes, to attract a particular audience who are expected to enjoy it the most based on their pre-existing appreciation for other screen productions like it. Genre is in many ways the embodiment of analysing audience expectations, and establishing a set of repeated elements. These elements include, but are not limited to: story structure, ending, character types and actions, and audio-visual effects such as music choices, colour palettes, and shots. These varying elements come together, and through experimenting with form, evolves to incorporate new norms. In this way, genre is not static, which makes it hard for both academics and film makers alike to agree on a definition. Genre can also be further broken down into subgenres, which is a more precise way of dividing up material by their elements. This is useful, as it allows a viewer to more easily label and therefore seek out their specific tastes, as well as marketers to find the correct audience. For example, an audience member who enjoys the broader genre of ‘comedy,’ because they enjoy films that make them laugh, may not necessarily enjoy ‘mockumentary’ style comedy - or at least not believe that they do based on previous encounters with such films - but may find ‘romantic comedy’ highly entertaining and prefer to view films that fall in this genre. In many ways, the genre of a film is dependant on the films that have gone before it. A new ‘horror’ may be measured against all those that have gone before it: does it 2 have the slasher quality of Psycho or Scream? Or the creeping dread of psychological horrors like The Black Swan or The Babadook? Or can it be compared to another set of films? This is not to say that all films must be derivative of one another, but that they simply must share similarities in how they approach a story and how that story is portrayed on screen. Genre is also a tool which helps the film studio know how best to market the film and whom it needs to be marketed to. It also allows audiences to seek out and find films they will most enjoy. 2. Identify the genre of your screenplay. The genre of my screenplay is television crime drama. For my three television programs, I have chosen the following: – Boardwalk Empire (HBO) – Breaking Bad (AMC) – The Wire (HBO) 3. Make a case that this genre is recognized by the industry. Through looking at the opinions of critics and books dedicated to the subject, one can observe that ‘crime drama’ is indeed a genre that is recognized by the wider television industry. In order to justify the term, we will look at how several television programmes often grouped into this genre are described by academics and professionals. First, we have HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, a premium cable show which focuses on criminal underbelly of Atlantic City. Radio Times news editor Suanna Lazarus described the show as a “award-winning 1920s crime drama,” in her article 3 announcing the end of the series, Boardwalk Empire to end after five seasons. In their book Tony Soprano's America: Gangsters, Guns, and Money, critics M. Keith Booker and Isra Daraiseh explore various shows inspired by The Sopranos, one of which is American show Boardwalk Empire, which they describe as “a lavish crime drama set during the Prohibition era of the 1920’s,” (14). Booker and Daraiseh go on to describe the series as “[narrating] the the twilight of American organized crime,” and dealing with the subject of “gangsterism,” reinforcing that this work, which is classed by critics as ‘crime drama’ deals with gangs and criminal underbellies. AMC’s Breaking Bad, too, is often referred to as a crime drama. In his book Sepinwall On Mad Men and Breaking Bad: An eShort from the Updated Revolution Was Televised, Alan Sepinwall refers to Breaking Bad as “an epic crime drama” which is “dark, and graphic,” citing a conversation with showrunner Vince Gilligan himself, who described the show as the “metamorphosis of a guy transforming from a good, law-abiding citizen to a drug kingpin,” (67, 68). Even the shows creator clearly intended Breaking Bad to show two sides of the law, and follow a protagonist on a journey through both parts of society. Finally, we have the criticality acclaimed HBO’s The Wire. In a review, New York Daily News entertainment writer, David Hinckley describes the show as a “prime crime drama,” praising the shows vastness and “huge ensemble cast of cops, journalists, politicians, criminals, hustlers and wary bystanders.” Hinckley also states that The Wire is a show that “rejects the easy notion that any parts of life, or any of the people in it, come in black and white,” which is consistent with the way criminals 4 and police are usually portrayed in crime drama - as flawed, well intentioned, and desperate, struggling people. 4. Summarize the history of that genre. It is likely that crime drama is derived from early literary detective fiction arising in the late 1880’s. This literary genre was born out of the Gothic genre, which often featured dark settings and undertones, favoured sexual sensuality over emotional romance, and most importantly, draped every element of the story in mystery. From gothic would come the detective novel - cosy mysteries in Britain like those of Agatha Christie’s works, and hard boiled in the United States. These popular genres carried through the mystery and allure of dark anti-heros and innocent maidens from the gothic, and on screen would morph to become the film noir in the 1940’s. The medieval castles and candle light of the gothic would become steamy dark streets, and lamplights casting shadows through the Venetian blinds. In 1925, Alfred Hitchcock would direct his first film, and go on to change the landscape of the crime genre by the mid-century, to one more focused on psychological crime and thrills than shoot-outs and gangsters. Hitchcock worked to create suspense and dread in his mysteries, and studied the work of Freud to better understand how the human psyche worked (Sandis, 56). Characters and villains alike would become far more three dimensional and complex as a result of his work, and a new standard had been set. By the mid-to-late-50’s, a new set of rating systems had been put into place, relaxing standards and allowing for a new wave of more adult content (Dirk, “Crime 5 and Gangster Films”). Violence and drugs made their way onto the screen, and in the wake of this change came Kubrick’s 1971 screen adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.